Corpus Christi wants to be a smarter city

Partners with IBM

David Crossley, Dec 13, 10.

IBM today announced that it is working with the city of Corpus Christi, Texas, to continuously improve efficiency and sustainability for the city’s more than 280,000 residents, according to a story in R&D News:

The city of Corpus Christi is applying IBM software to measure, monitor and improve the way it manages city water, roads, airport, parks, and utilities. With greater intelligence across its departments, the city can more quickly evaluate and respond to issues, anticipate and prevent problems, and improve the quality of life for its citizens.

Before working with IBM, each city department had its own process for handling incoming work requests and ongoing maintenance, typically operating on a reactive basis using paper to track issues. Because there wasn’t a central system of tracking existing issues, budgeting and managing city resources was sometimes difficult. IBM software helps Corpus Christi city departments and managers know what is happening across the city, when it is happening and who is handling it across the city in real time, and how much the work costs.

“Corpus Christi is evolving into a more sustainable city—one that has intelligence, foresight and accountability built into the way we manage the services we provide our citizens,” said Steve Klepper, an administrative superintendent for Corpus Christi. “Working with IBM, we have the real-time status of city services, automated work orders and an overview of city’s infrastructure to better manage our resources, as well as better maintain the city’s mission-critical assets.”

As one of Texas’s largest cities on the Gulf of Mexico, Corpus Christi relies significantly on port industries, tourism and higher education to drive its economy. The city strives to improve the quality of life for citizens while keeping operating costs low and maintaining high levels of service.

“Corpus Christi is setting the bar for how municipalities can use technology to gain intelligence into their departments and systems to operate more efficiently and provide residents with a better place to live,” said Guru Banavar, IBM CTO for Smarter Cities. “Working with IBM, Corpus Christi city managers are operating smarter and managing their work and crews better.”

Corpus Christi, Texas: A smarter city by the Bay

Editor’s note: Houston Tomorrow is working with IBM to bring the Smarter Cities program to the Houston region. More.]